Alliance locking isn't broken... customer service is

I personally hate the campaign locking. It caters to a minority of players while making it more difficult for most people to play with friends. Regardless, it didn't bother me too much until I ran into Zenimax's/Bethesda's crap customer service. If those are the rules, then so be it, but I like to informed of how such mechanics are being implemented. Also, I expect this to be done in game, not through forums... twitch.. or anywhere else.

When entering a campaign we're shown a simple warning stating the campaign will be faction locked until it's over. At no point does the message inform us that we'll automatically remain in the campaign once the 30 days is over, or that we will have to pay a 100k fee, per character, to exit a campaign. In other words, there's no waiting until the campaign is over and then selecting a new campaign as it starts. We still have to pay.

In my case, I found this out when I logged onto a character after a 30 day campaign ended, and discovered this character was still locked into the campaign. I want to point out this toon was not in Cyrodiil when I logged onto it. I had taken several characters to campaigns during the previous 30 days, not realizing I was racking up a hefty fine for doing so. When I contacted customer service regarding the issue, I received a message mentioning planned implementation of safety guards to prevent such things from happening and a statement saying their tool limitations prevent customer service from unlocking campaigns. I was also given a tip to look at each character's saved location on the character selection screen before logging into the game, to prevent accidental campaign locks. The problem with this is, as I stated before, my character wasn't in Cyrodiil when I logged in (which I had stated in my ticket). So the solution to not getting auto-campaign locked is to... not log in my character ever?

This whole issue could have been avoided if Zeni/Behesda could have been bothered to properly communicate the mechanics with customers, instead of providing an inaccurate warning stating we'd be locked until the end of the campaign (which wasn't true).

Pluse, Zeni… get rid of that stupid 100k fee. I should be able to place all 10 of my toons into new campaigns every 30 days without paying 1 mil in fees.

I didn't realize that trying to PvP would leave me feeling like I had preodered Fallout 76, a canvas bag, a bottle of crap rum, and submitted a customer service ticket that would dox my info. I managed to not do any of those things, and still feel the burn of Bethesda customer service.

Well there we go. I learned more from this post than any website could tell me. I've been pissed all day wondering how my DC toon managed to be faction locked to the same campaign, despite never taking her back in there since reset. I know so many people who have had the same issue and like you've mentioned, there is no clear explanation of how it all now works. I dont even have 100k AP to pay to switch campaigns before I go in, I spent 3 mil on gear boxes in Vlastarus and don't particularly want to play on the same campaign on the same faction for another 30 days just to get the AP to unlock it. What a mess.

To me, ideally, when a campaign concludes it should boot everyone out of cyrodiil, and close down for 5 minutes or so. It should reset the map so all alliances start on even ground. It should also then clear all home campaigns and any alliance affiliation that anyone's account has. This way when a new campaign starts the map is fresh, no one is in it and everyone has to rehome/realign with an alliance, and everyone clearly understands what is going on. To me this seems the best way to keep people from inadvertently picking alliance they don't mean to. It also gets rid of any fees required to do so.

I opened a ticket when I realized this happened to me, a month ago. They replied like 2 weeks later with no actual answer only to vomit out a scripted answer of how faction locking works - which did not explain at all what I had pointed out - that the toons in cyrodiil are not being kicked out at the end of campaign. Instead they are left in there and the server just locks you in if you're toon is in there. So *** DUMB.

They should have done it like it was originally where you could drop the campaign and rehome under the correct faction but they didn’t. As it is paying to rehome all your characters makes anything you get from campaign rewards worthless.

I had the same problem today!
I played with my red characters until the main campaign expires. Once the campaign restarted i tried to enter with a yellow character but a message told me that if i want to access i should have first had to leave the campaign with the ebonheart pact character who was still present in the campaign i wanted to leave, so i entered with that character, i paid 100k AP to leave that campaign but when i returned with my aldmeri character, finally convinced that i could play, i discovered that for another 30 days i can only play with red characters.
I decided to contact support and the only thing i got was this message:

"We understand there are some frustrations currently when logging into a character that was previously in a 30-day faction locked campaign, and automatically being re-locked into the same Alliance. In the future, we will be adding some protections against this scenario.

Until we’re able to implement that, you should double check your character’s last saved location on the character select panel to help prevent accidental Alliance locking to a Campaign when you want to switch to another Alliance. We appreciate your patience in this matter."

I had the same problem today!
I played with my red characters until the main campaign expires. Once the campaign restarted i tried to enter with a yellow character but a message told me that if i want to access i should have first had to leave the campaign with the ebonheart pact character who was still present in the campaign i wanted to leave, so i entered with that character, i paid 100k AP to leave that campaign but when i returned with my aldmeri character, finally convinced that i could play, i discovered that for another 30 days i can only play with red characters.
I decided to contact support and the only thing i got was this message:

"We understand there are some frustrations currently when logging into a character that was previously in a 30-day faction locked campaign, and automatically being re-locked into the same Alliance. In the future, we will be adding some protections against this scenario.

Until we’re able to implement that, you should double check your character’s last saved location on the character select panel to help prevent accidental Alliance locking to a Campaign when you want to switch to another Alliance. We appreciate your patience in this matter."

To make sure that didn’t happen to me this time I had to give up my campaign rewards.

I tried paying that 100k AP, still didnt work. I went thru all my characters and make sure i paid 100k on each. I still could not switch and that I got the same pre recorded reply from customer service. Goes to show how much they really care about us. I went 30 days bot being able to play with my friends because of a miatake i maid 2 months ago. Needless to say its beyond frustrating. This whole faction lock needs to go. So incredibly dumb the whole thing. What was One Tamriel about??? One Tamriel was about freedom to play wherever you want when you want!

I have send the following response (see below) to Bethesda Help Team to a generic reply
I got from them [Incident: 190819-003947] after I discovered that two of my toons are being
locked in their campaigns. I had followed their generic advice and it does not work!

"I followed your advice and had the toons (atherun & Athenium), that participate in PVP
campaigns out of those campaign and Cyrodiil before the end of those campaigns.
I have tried to assign those toons to a different campaign the following day, but I get
the following message: " you currently can enter this campaign on aldmeri/ebonheart
characters you must either abandon or change the home of every character currently
assigned to this campaign". The issue is that when I tried to abandon such campaigns
I get a message that said that I have to pay 100000 AP, which should not be the case.
It is clear to me at least, that as it stands the system does not work as you said it would...
can you help me?"